Hugs & Kisses from LA: Part II

(Friday, March 28, 2008: from the Starbucks series)

my little house

in the Hollywood hills

On Friday I woke up a woman consumed. I could barely get out of bed. I needed a man.

But, there wasn’t one. So I did yoga. I ate. I had a shower. And three hours later I still hadn’t had a single non-sexual thought. I had so much work to do, a whole presentation to write, and the day was slipping through my fidgety hands. I needed to get out of the house, go be out in the world of people, feel less isolated, stop being a horny divorcee.

So, I went to the one place I knew I liked, Café Vienna on Melrose Avenue, to get some bloody work done.

Melrose

When the sweaty Mexican busboy told me they were about to close I felt my eyes burn. Crying? Are those fucking tears? Okay, this is no average frustrated Friday. I am actually on the verge of breakdown. I need my friends.

Okay, no friends? Alcohol.

Ten shaky but militant minutes later, I was sitting alone on a banquette for seven in a corner bar called The Village Idiot. Whatever. I don’t know why I bothered to look at the juice menu, because when the waitress came back I asked her what went down easier, the Pinot Grigio or the Chardonnay. I was hoping she’d say Chardonnay. She did. And that was how I started drinking again like old times.

the ghost of me in the window booth

Between my first and third glass of wine, I edited four versions of a story called “I Remember,” which recounts the day of my grandfather’s death in 1988. I think I also ate a goat cheese and leek tart, because I remember it arriving, and then it was gone.

“I Remember” was earmarked for submission to the Australian Cancer Association’s short story competition, and the deadline was five days away. Should I be doing this drunk? Probably not. But driving drunk was apparently totally a good idea. So I wobbled across the street and into my bright red rent-a-junk, and drove off at the slowest over-the-speed-limit pace I could manage to…

vroom

... let’s see, it’s Hollywood, it’s Friday night, and in addition to getting laid what I need most is an electricity outlet, wifi, and possibly some coffee. Shit... starbucks.

On my way out of the Village Idiot I had passed a newspaper stand with a host of free publications. The Onion (had read it), Metro (how to have fun if you swing both ways), and LA Weekly with the lead article: “How to Get Divorced by 30: A Beginner’s Guide to Ending Your Starter Marriage,” which was tucked firmly under my arm when I arrived at the vile beige-hued establishment I was meant to be boycotting.

“How do you say a very weak, middle sized, sweet flavoured latte in Starbucksese?”

“A grande, half-caff vanilla latte,” replied the out-of-work actor behind the counter.

“Half-caff? I’ve never heard of…”

“Yeah, that’s what you want right?”

“Okay, yep. That."

I sat down opposite a small effeminate man drawing surrealistic interpretations of whatever in an oversized sketchbook with a mixture of glitter and crayons.

I booted up my computer, opened “I Remember”, and closed it. My work documents got similar treatment, only faster. The LA Weekly article, both hilarious and accurate, was clearly my destiny on this night, so I sipped on my tasty half-caff and sat there rocking in my chair and feeling unjustifiably okay with my life for a tipsy and gleeful little while.

I hadn’t quite finished the article when I felt my mood lift immeasurably. I was now more happy than I’d ever been in my life, or at least in the past week, or at least since my vitamin B-everything cocktail of the previous morning. Anyway, it felt good.

At around this time I noticed the music that was playing, and for a moment had no idea what was going on or where I was at all. It was American cowboy on the plateau, meets 50s broken hearted crooner, meets did my father play this when he proposed to mum?

The little effeminate man opposite me obviously had perked up at the same time… “It is like we are in a Little House On The Prairie, and I don’t know where is Laura…”


He was French. Very French. I laughed with shoulders and everything, but really only at his accent and the weirdness of it all, because honestly, I have never seen A Little House On The Prairie...

I sighed deeply and wondered what was next. Should I try to convert little Mr. Glitter and Crayons tonight?

Jesus, I should never have gotten out of bed.

I went back to the counter.

“Can I have the other half of my caff now?

“Sure…”

Hugs & Kisses from LA: Part I

Hello from the land of the male pinkie ring!

Hello!
Hey!
How are ya?
Grayt… how are yoo?
Yeah, good. What’s happening?
Ah, yeah, you know. How about you? What’s happening?
Ah, grayt.
Yeah? Grayt.

Okay, phew, now we got that out of the way…

Honestly, Hollywood is growing on me. In a veins on blue cheese kind of way. Makes you hungry for something, but you know it’s not good for you. Still, you’ll enjoy it in small doses.

The past three weeks have been lots of work and little play for the most part. Some exploration, yes, a couple of road trips, but largely I’ve retreated to my house in the hills and squeezed my creativity out onto the walls and documents and presentations and on into my dreams.

Willy: The Team

I start most mornings with a sweaty gym session or an hour of yoga. Then Willy, my creative compadre, arrives at the house somewhere around 10 a.m., and I pretend to set some structure for the day. Then I run around with a marker and throw our ideas onto giant post-it notes while we riff off each other and sometimes fall over into corners laughing.

When we get tired, we exchange music and flip through magazines and the weirdest books we can find in LA’s many eclectic stores.

Around six or seven o’clock I start getting ansy, so I kick Willy out and go for a sunset drive along Mullholland drive, or stroll along another true-to-the-movies boardwalk. Then I go home and work some more or write or read and eventually fall asleep while watching LA’s twinkling lights in the valley below my bed.

Everything was going great. Kind of.

Then a few days ago I woke up agitated and dream-stoned and thought… WHAT the hell are you doing??? Helloooo-ooooo.

what matters in Hollywood

I was overcome with aggravation. I felt isolated, a little lonely, bored of talking about nightclubs, and extremely needy of some diversity, some interaction, a change of scenery, a sincere conversation, and maybe a hug.

I sat around and moped for somewhere between one and two days. Then I announced that the office was moving to Melrose Avenue. There, I found myself a cafe and a cute waiter and some good music, and soon started to feel better surrounded by life and color and possibilities again.

So now, with some newly inserted ingredients my days are more diverse and so sufficiently distracting again. The work is still good, I’m living a healthy life, and true to a casual preference developed on my travels, I haven’t had a drink since I got here.

our target audience

In other news, I am still in touch with a man I met a few months ago in Thailand, and with whom I had a magical affair. I mention this not because it has hopes of some extremely happy ending, but rather because I am learning a lot from this first foray into playful companionship since my separation.

He is wonderful, and we’re wonderful together (as only two people with oceans between them and memories of great intimacy and no sense of obligations can be), but like always there is a risk to every hey-this-is-really-great scenario.

Yes, I needed a gorgeous lover with whom I could feel safe and laugh and who was intellectually stimulating and who helped me move on as an individual. And that’s exactly what I got. But now, three months of long-distance seduction later, I do notice that I feel less alone than I should, and also that I am getting used to this man in an mildly attached and vaguely pre-needy kind of way.

But it’s not so much because I am falling into whatever. It's because I'm allowing this experience to populate places in my mind that I was supposed to leave vacant, so that they could come to rely only on themselves for a sense of fulfillment, or hope, or confidence that I am not really the faded flower I sometimes see when I look in the mirror.

Instead, fantasy now leaks into those spaces and props me up with imaginative daydreams, guaranteeing me an eventual plummet back down to earth when, for whatever reason, I realize that in reality I am alone.

In case it is not coming through here, this is all extremely positive. I am immeasurably blessed to have come as far as I have, and would not change a single thing. My work, my travels, my friends, and my first significant lover are teaching me volumes about my new strengths, my new weaknesses, and how to be a single, open-minded, ambitious, traveling, thirty-something-year-old woman with no real home, a slightly wounded heart, and a chance to rebuild whatever life she wants.

In the ‘recently separated, out of work and feeling guilty’ category, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Mullholland

my terrace with pups

The Journey Continues...

After the leaving Kopan Monastery, I found it difficult to write for a long time. Mainly because I did not know where to start, and I was liking keeping all the sensations and thoughts inside. Then, pretty soon, I simply got distracted and moved on to different experiences, from which it was even harder to build a literary bridge.

Wonderfully, in the last few days of my travels, I had an experience that inspired me to sit down and write a final post. I did that, and since then it has been sitting in an almost-completed form on my computer. I hope to post it on Journey Always Waiting in the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, I am writing this post from Los Angeles. What happened was that in February, when I was on my way to India for the Dalai Lama's teachings, I was offered a short-term project creating a brand for a new nightclub and restaurant on the Hollywood strip. That's where I am right now.

Pulp Fiction Diner

Once this is project done, I plan to get back onto the road. I will start in Bali, but probably need a month or two in Melbourne in between, to take care of some practical life and living issues.

I now need to make a decision. Where do I post to in the meanwhile... Firefly or Journey? Technically, Journey is meant to be a travel blog. But technically, I am still traveling.

Since there is no clear answer, I have decided to split my writing into two difficult to distinguish categories. Some things will be posted here, others will be posted there. My journey is bleeding into my life, and so my blogs must bleed into each other as well.

Regardless of where the words appear, it feels like this whole year will be a continuation of the transformative journey I began on October 1, 2007; rich with short stories, unexpected twists and turns, and with my new life force the common denominator beneath it all.

If anything is clear at all, it is that this is the beginning of a totally new way of life for me. I see the decisions I am making during this time not in the context of a vacation or an adventure, but as a focused, strategic and wisdom-inspired movement towards a new future, a new destiny.

Wherever I post, everything I do now feels like it is part of my Journey Always Waiting.